Page 29 - Flathead Beacon // 8.31.16

UNCOMMON GROUND MIKE JOPEK
GUEST COLUMN TODD SCHLAPFER
STUNG BY COST OF
BOTTLING FLATHEAD’S WATER ...
IMEDICINE
REACHED INTO THE MATURE
diabetes stroke or a failing heart, fami- lies will do almost anything to save a life. That’s understandable.
But what’s not very understandable is the inaction of Congress. Even research funding for the climate-related Zika virus hasn’t occurred as the two parties in Washington ght over who is more right.
Politics is sport to many. Few politi- cians these days want to govern, to get stu done. Some will say anything during campaign season. Governing clearly mat- ters more but many just enjoy the sport of campaigning.
Instead of making any xes to our national healthcare, politicians are rou- tinely spouting ideological support or opposition to solutions.
It’s no secret that medicine saves lives. Neither epinephrine, nor insulin should cost $500 in a modern world. That’s just greedy.
Congress has a moral obligation to x the rapidly escalating costs of life-saving medicine, especially those that have been around for a while. Most people don’t much care whose fault it is. Just x it.
Much of political dialogue isn’t even about how to make our lives better, more e cient. The current political dialogue is about building walls, deleted emails, and whose hands are smaller. It’s often soph- omoric, bullying for any outlet.
For politicians who have yet to gure it out, every family has a relative who gets sick. Everyone, at some point in our short lives, needs medical help. Everyone – hopefully after living a full life, dies.
Today that bee sting on my arm is a tender annoyance, a reminder. One that is likely to repeat itself over a lifetime. That wasp did not send me to the hos- pital, in search of urgent care like some other people.
Maybe even a do-nothing Congress could do something; a reasonable price on urgent medicine would be a decent place to start. Seems like a small step, yet would help millions of real people.
ITHINK AGAIN
N ADDITION TO THE POTENTIAL
potential amount of water for process- ing those bottles and we have as much as 383.2 million gallons. The content of that water and where that extra water ends up has yet to be accounted for. It takes over 2,000 times more energy to make and ll plastic water bottles than it takes to make tap water.
We now have enough history of water bottling operations that cause people, states, national parks, schools, etc. to question the economic and environ- mental cost of allowing water bottling operations to continue, even in drought- stricken regions. MAW Company’s pro- posed operation of 1.22 billion plastic bottles per year is no small endeavor, enlarged even more knowing that all of that water will be leaving the Flat- head ... as a commodity – as an exported commodity.
Unfortunately, we recover only about 5-10 percent of the plastics we produce. The rest ends up in land lls, lakes, rivers and oceans. The MAW Company will be using polyethylene terephthalate (PET) for their plastic bottles. This is a chemi- cal compound composed of many chem- icals that can contaminate plants, ani- mals and microscopic life as it leaches into soils, rivers, lakes and oceans, not to mention the generation of tons of carbon dioxide. The amount of plastic found that washed ashore in 2010 was enough to cover every inch of coast line on our planet.
Consider this: the enlarging clus- ters of ocean gyres (a network of circu- lating currents that accumulate ocean debris, e.g. plastic). There are 5 known large gyres circulating in our oceans, the largest in the North Paci c now greater than twice the size of Texas. An esti- mated 11 millions tons of oating plas- tic covers nearly 5 million square miles in the Paci c Ocean. Hundreds of ocean species are threatened by plastic pollu- tion, not to mention the health of the ocean itself. We depend upon the ocean for food and climate. If the oceans die, what happens to us?
While it may seem that fresh bottled water is a smart economic investment, the potential impact and cost to the environment, including our invaluable Flathead natural resources, surpasses any pro t. Our kids and generations to come will inherit that impact and cost.
We now live in a world where human intelligence and conscientiousness about how we impact the natural world is a determinant force for our destiny. The Flathead Valley is the treasury of a precious water resource. It is imperative that we protect it, not only for us now, but for generations to come.
plant to feel how full the tomatillo
husks were and immediately felt the re of the yellow jacket sting, as it sud- denly clung to my right arm. It was my second sting of the season.
The rst wasp stung me on the tip of my ear and it hurt like heck. This recent irritation was on the tender portion of my arm. This morning it itched intensely. For me, it’s a hot annoyance.
For anyone with severe allergies, it’s a life emergency.
People with severe allergies often carry epinephrine autoinjectors or EpiP- ens to treat anaphylaxis with life saving adrenaline.
A mere decade ago these life saving EpiPens cost less than $100 per two- pack. Today it costs nearly $500 and is expected to climb to over $600. Epineph- rine says it expires in about a year, leav- ing those with allergic reactions to things like bees or peanuts little choice but to buy new life-saving devices.
More than 65,000 people in Montana have been diagnosed with diabetes.
People who recently paid $200 for life-saving insulin are suddenly nding themselves paying up to $500 for the same amount of essential medicine.
For those a ected by metabolic dis- ease, it’s not simply high blood sugar, it’s life or death. The disease can cause blind- ness, strokes, amputation and death.
Last year in Montana, nearly 3,000 people rode an air ambulance, often to save a life. A Butte mom took her 2-month-old daughter 600 miles to a hos- pital to tend to a failing heart. The mom’s bill was over $55,000.
Montana is a rural state. Some years back a railroad engineer told me that travel across the high line of Montana was greater in distance than the rail from Chicago to Washington D.C.
Anyone driving across Montana will attest that it’s one big state. When emer- gencies arise, be it anaphylactic shock,
disruption of the ecological integ-
rity of our Flathead Valley aquifer, we cannot ignore the environmental impact other aspects of the Montana Artesian Water (MAW) Company will have, such as the pollution, energy expenditure and damage plastic water bottles can do the land surface, lakes, rivers and oceans.
Let me back up a bit.
Our human biology is composed of at least 70 percent water. Water is the most essential element to life as a human being. It’s no di erent for our planet Earth. Although about 70 percent of our planet’s surface is covered by water, only 2.5 percent of it is potable. All but 1.7 percent of that is ice, the rest is salt water. That leaves about 0.8 percent of all the water on Earth as drinkable. Approximately 0.7 percent of that fresh water is underground.
Unlike ever before, we now place tre- mendous demand upon potable water, perhaps greater than nature’s ability to replenish. If this demand continues there are projections that in less than two decades over 5 billion people will be living in regions where basic needs for drinking, cooking and sanitation will falter. A growing number of diseases are the result of contaminated, toxic water. As much as one-third of our planet’s population lacks e ective sanitation. This simply can’t continue. There is no substitute for fresh, clean water – like we have here in the Flathead Valley.
In order to fully appreciate the impact upon our community and our indigenous natural resource of water, we must understand the entire eco- nomic and environmental footprint of a water bottling operation. An Environ- mental Impact Study is fundamental to that understanding. An operation of the magnitude proposed by the MAW Com- pany cannot dismiss the importance of establishing an EIS for realizing the risks and making the right decision.
Studies of water bottling opera- tions are now available. We know how much energy it takes to produce bottled water in plastic. It takes oil to make plastic bottles; it took at least 32-54 million barrels of oil in 2007. Drilling and fracking for oil uses a substantial amount of ground water that ends up contaminated. It also requires energy for bottle manufacturing, cleaning, lling and capping, sealing, transpor- tation, packaging, refrigeration, etc. It takes not only lots of oil to make plastic bottles, it also takes extra water. It takes an average of 2 liters of water to make 1 liter of drinking water. The MAW Com- pany says it will be bottling 191.6 mil- lion gallons of water annually. Add the
“IT’S NO SECRET THAT MEDICINE SAVES LIVES. NEITHER EPINEPHRINE, NOR INSULIN SHOULD COST $500 IN A MODERN WORLD.”
Mike (Uncommon Ground) Jopek and Dave (Closing Range) Skinner often fall on opposite sides of the fence when it comes to political and outdoor issues. Their columns alternate each week in the Flathead Beacon.
Todd Schlapfer lives in Somers
AUGUST 31, 2016 // FLATHEADBEACON.COM
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